David Larson, left, set a school record with 70 points but was overshadowed by Jack Taylor, who scored 138. / Cory Hall, USA TODAY Sports

by Bryce Miller, USA TODAY Sports

by Bryce Miller, USA TODAY Sports

For anyone without a television set, access to the Internet or general contact with other human beings, Grinnell College basketball player Jack Taylor scored 138 points on Tuesday night.

As Taylor roared to the NCAA all-divisions record for scoreboard abuse, topping the mark of Rio Grande's Bevo Francis in 1954 by a stunning 25 points, another player carved out a piece of history, too.

And almost no one noticed.

Emerging from the other locker room to start the game at Division III Grinnell was Faith Baptist sophomore David Larson ... who was about to score the quietest 70 points in the history of college basketball.

As Grinnell funneled the ball to Taylor for shot after shot - an elbow-testing 108 in all - Larson was assigned to the far end of the court against the opponent's full-court press. What it meant: The player from a winless college in Ankeny, Iowa, was about to conduct a two-hour, personal layup clinic to break his school's record in the 179-104 loss.

For Larson, it was cardiovascular boot camp - in high-top sneakers.

Layups sound easy, right? Well, they are ... until you try to score 33 of them.

"You get really tired," Larson said of facing Grinnell, which uses a record-setting system that switches player lineups in shifts like an NHL line change. "That's a lot of running."

Do you try that many layups during pregame warm-ups? "No." Do you run that many in practice? "No."

Larson said he ran more short-court sprints at the basket Tuesday night than all the sprinting during an entire practice.

When it was over, Taylor had scored 138 points with a statistical line that might force an actuarial science student into counseling. Larson, though, was busy building a Frankenstein scorebook entry of his own.

The 70 points were built on 34 of 44 shooting, with 66 of those points on layups. He added two free throws and one jump shot - "baseline, about 10 to 15 feet, I guess" - to round out a school record night for both teams.

Then, showcasing one more bit of hustle, he ran from the spotlight.

"He's a shy kid. He would never want the publicity," said Faith Baptist coach and athletics director Brian Fincham, who said Larson turned down other interview requests before agreeing to one from The Des Moines Register. "He's a great kid. Hard worker. We love having him around."

When the telephone call neared its end, Larson was asked if the morning after a record-setting game made him feel sore, tired or simply ready to head home to Owatonna, Minn., for Thanksgiving.

"All of the above," he said.

As the Internet, sports talk radio and TV cable giants threatened to melt from the debate about what Taylor's night meant in terms of the sanctity of the game and sportsmanship, the player and coach from central Iowa wondered what the fuss was about.

To them, all's well - except, maybe, for the scoreboard repairman likely poised on speed dial at Grinnell.

"We're fine with it. We're happy for Jack," said Fincham, whose team is now 0-4 on the young season. "We knew going into the game what Grinnell did, the system and style. We don't have any hard feelings toward them at all."

So does a shoot-a-polooza make a mockery of Dr. James Naismith and all things hoops-holy? No way. Both teams play by the same rules. The basket is the same height, the court is the same length and the clock ticks equally for all.

Taylor had to hit all those shots - a staggering 27 of them from three-point range. And in the end, a defense needs to find a way stop it.

The only reasonable sportsmanship debate, to my thinking, revolves around some of the points down the stretch, once the game was decided. That's the tricky part with Grinnell, though. Pinpointing when winners and losers are assured against the Pioneers is, quite fittingly, uncertain math.

Big leads evaporate more quickly in the Grinnell system, too. The Pioneers lose with the same system when shots fail to fall - as witnessed by setbacks in four of their final six games a season ago. They are, in the words of former NFL coach Dennis Green, "who we thought they were" by leading all levels of college hoops in scoring 16 of the last 18 years.

It's common for purists to hate when someone starts mad scientist-ing something, be it basketball or presidential predictions (right, Nate Silver?).

Meanwhile, Fincham's cellphone suffered as much of a beating as the Grinnell scoreboard as national media attempted to gather perspective from the other bench on a historic night. Fincham spoke by phone on SportsCenter while juggling calls from USA TODAY, The New York Times, the Associated Press, CBS Sports, Fox Sports and more.

"Let's just say my cellphone plugged in entire time, or it would be dead," he said. "All the texts, e-mails, messages. It's been crazy."

Almost all wanted to talk about Taylor and his mind-numbing 138 points. Grinnell's scoring machine appeared on the Today show and Good Morning America as NBA megastar Kobe Bryant weighed in via ESPN.

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